The beauty of Republican state senator Michael Nozzolio's defense of creating a new State Senate seat near Albany was its brutal simplicity.

During a public hearing in Buffalo, a Democratic state senator had said the newly created seat—which will exist because the Republicans wish to maximize their odds of hanging onto their narrow majority—should be located in the part of the state where the biggest population growth has been.

Nozzolio responded by saying that means this Democrat only wanted that as a way of giving preference to New York City. So the argument wasn't about the implausibility of a partisan gerrymander-scheme, but about upstate versus downstate, which never gets old.

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew (left), and Jarrod Bernstein (right), the White House Jewish-outreach director, met for the first time with Jewish leaders at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York office this morning. [David Pollock]